


Lessons

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-23
Updated: 2009-04-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 13:09:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15413631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Giles takes steps to ensure that Spike doesn't double-cross the Scoobies.





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hunenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunenka/gifts).



> Okay, so I'm a bad, bad mod - **hunenka** challenged me last month to write some Spike torture, with Spike defiant. Then I bugged her and asked for more guidance and she said "how about some Giles, early on, still angry about being tortured by Angelus and Jenny's death?"
> 
> So this is the result. Hope you like it honey! And, like, I should really be more prompt! WOo! only one more last-month challenge to go and I can write THIS month's challenges!

Spike was silently congratulating himself on the success of his audacious plan. He’d seen the predictable stupidity of the white hats for years. Of course they would offer succor, even to an evil creature who had threatened on many occasions to kill them. (He was lucky enough, in this case, to have been unsuccessful). And the goody goodies, with their inability to think past the present tense, didn’t care about how many people “not them” he’d killed. Oh, no. He was safe, he was fed, and he didn’t even have to actually be useful.

He flexed his biceps against the ropes, feeling them groan and wondering how long to wait before he demanded his liberty. He could break the ropes, sure, but best for now to let the kiddies think they were safe, that the flimsy twists of hemp were all they needed to pet the big bad wolf and not get bit.

In short, he considered himself the wolf in the fold, and there was a certain safety in that. So he wasn’t concerned when the kiddies all filed out, leaving him with Rupert. The watcher closed the door on the last of the children and turned to face Spike, a glower on his face. He walked toward the kitchen.

Tied to a kitchen chair, there wasn’t much Spike could do, but he managed to slouch insouciantly. “When do I get fed?”

Giles stopped. His eyes narrowed, his face became stony. “You think you’ve gotten away with this, don’t you?”

Spike smirked. “Nothing to get a way with.” He batted his eyelashes. “’M helpless as a lamb.”

And then something happened which shifted the world. Nothing moved, and yet everything did.

Giles smiled.

Spike straightened and coughed. “Fair’s fair, you know. I help you out, you help me out.”

“Yes, you did help me out, didn’t you, when Angelus was torturing me.”

Spike frowned in confusion. Giles opened a drawer in the kitchen and took out a knife.

Spike didn’t like the way Giles held the knife up, glancing from it to Spike, like a painter with a brush studying his canvas. “Too right I helped you out! Still have all your bits, haven’t you? If it weren’t for me you’d be nothing but a greasy stain on Angelus’ floor.”

Giles continued to study the point of the knife. “Yes, it was your idea to forgo the violence and invade my mind. I never did thank you for that.” Giles tested the point of the knife with the side of his thumb and walked toward Spike. The intent look on his face gave little doubt to how he would show his generosity.

“Wait a bleeding minute!” Spike’s chair hopped backward with his struggles to move. “I saved your life!”

Giles grabbed the rope running across Spike’s chest and stopped his backward motion. “No, Spike. You helped yourself. You did what you always do: looked after your own self interest. You’re a vampire.” Giles drew Spike closer. “And I know vampires very well.”

“Well my interests are yours now, aren’t they?” Spike scowled.

“You think you’ve found yourself the perfect dupes, haven’t you? Protection, food, and, with any luck, a solution to your little problem.” Giles leaned down, placing his mouth very close to Spike’s ear. His knife he set against Spike’s opposite cheek. “Do you think I am a very great fool?”

And then he pushed away, leaving a small nick on Spike’s cheek. He set the knife down on his desk and opened a drawer, fishing around in it as casually as if he had not just been threatening a vampire.

Spike sputtered, “What will the kiddies think when they find me all cut up?”

“That if you keep trying to escape and being a thorn in my side, Buffy may as well stake you. Ah, here we are.” Giles held up a small book. It had a well-worn cloth binding and the title stamped in a curving font popular in William’s youth.

Bloody magicians. Spike lunged forward, groaning with effort.

Giles just calmly thumbed through the pages of his book.

The ropes were strong, and well-tied, and he didn’t have much leverage, but he did have vampire strength. With his legs, Spike pushed up, and then slammed himself down again, breaking the chair under him.

He jumped to his feet, the ropes falling from him like so much cooked spaghetti, without the chair to hold them in place. He took one step out of the wreckage, and then fell, his leg collapsing under him as though it was asleep.

Giles held one hand out over him, stepping close to finish his incantation. He snapped the little book closed and took off his glasses.

Spike tried to move, but couldn’t. His arms and legs lay where they fell, not even twitching in response to his desire. “What… what have you done?”

“Nothing permanent,” Giles said, as though disappointed. He kicked aside the broken chair-legs and hauled Spike to his feet. He was limp as a rag-doll, hanging in the human’s grip. “Now, let’s teach you a lesson, shall we?”

***

Spike did not fail to notice the heavy-handed irony as Giles secured him to another chair – metal this time. He’d taken him to an abandoned warehouse, one of many such around the town. Not their old lair, no, but close. The room was very similar, dark, concrete floor and smell of old engine oil. A single safety bulb hung from a chain-lift overhead. And Giles had him in the same position Giles had been in, that day. His hands were behind him, low, the inside of his biceps pressing hard into the back of the chair.

“Do you think you’re going to compete with Angelus, you berk?” Spike watched Giles setting out his tools, pausing to check the binding and mutter an incantation over the ropes. “Because I’ve seen the old boy at work, and you’ve barely gotten past the appetizer course of what he can dish out.”

Giles stood dispassionately in front of Spike. “Yes, I’m sure you’ve passively watched many tortures without intervening. It’s just one of the reasons we cannot forget what you are. _Fine_.” He waved his hand. “You can move now.”

Spike hadn’t needed to hear the words; the wave of magic passing over him brought spasms in its wake as the trapped muscles responded to a hundred backed-up signals to move. Spike shook uncontrollably for a short while and his skin tore against the restrains on his wrists.

Giles watched. When Spike finally got himself under control, leaning forward against his bonds to gasp, Giles nodded. “Now then, I can’t invade your mind or bring your memories to life to torment you, so we’ll just have to see how creative I can get with good, old-fashioned pain, hmm?”

“I told you. I only did it to save your sorry…”

Giles slapped him, hard, across the face. Spike glared up at him silently, his face a pure mask of promised vengeance.

“Feel free to tell me when this hurts,” Giles said, and set his knife to Spike’s thigh. The denim made more noise, tearing, than the skin beneath. Spike jerked, instinctively to get away, and his legs tensed, ankles pulling on the ropes that tied them to the chair legs. It only sped the seep of blood. Giles turned the blade in his hand and sliced up, across the pelvic crest and along the thin slice of belly exposed between t-shirt and jeans.

Although his jaw was clenched and his chest rising in short breaths, Spike affected a bored tone. “Oh. The pain. How ever will I bear it?”

Giles brought the blade back to the left in a casual swipe, adding a second line across Spike’s belly. “Yes, I’m quite sure my youth makes me an amateur by your standards.” He grunted a little, jabbing the knife into Spike’s other thigh and twisting it.

Spike gritted his teeth and made a strangled sound.

“But of course,” Giles said, wiping the bloody blade on Spike’s knee, “This is only preliminary.”

He set the knife down, took out his pocket handkerchief, and dabbed the sweat of exertion from his brow. Then he picked up a jar of clear liquid and emptied it into Spike’s lap.

Despite his resolve not to make noise, a scream rose out of the back of Spike’s throat and he thrashed anew at his bonds. It felt like acid, like a million horrid ants dipped in acid and crawling into his skin, leaving trails of fire zig-zagging through his guts. He strained forward, trying to fold over his groin, choking back a howl.

Giles dried his hands and picked up the knife again. “Oh really. It’s only alcohol. If I had wanted to leave permanent damage, it would have been holy water.” He grimaced slightly in distaste and started to cut away Spike’s T-shirt. “As I said: I know vampires. You have a semblance of human intelligence, but your animal nature overrides it. If you are capable of learning anything,” he sighed, “and that is a very big ‘if’, then you are going to require strong, physical incentive.” He stepped back, frowning at Spike’s bared chest, his knife tapping his bottom lip.

“I already told you,” Spike gasped, his mouth hanging open between words, as though extra air would really help. “’M not out to double cross you. Just want what you want.”

Giles placed the knife-tip under Spike’s chin and drew his face upward with pressure against the delicate skin behind his jaw. “No, Spike. You’re out for your own selfish, soulless self-interest. Which amounts to the same; the moment it is more convenient to work against us than with us, that is what you will do.”

“Yeah? I’m evil! Never said I wasn’t.”

“Not good enough.” Giles traced the knife tip casually around the curve of Spike’s pectoral muscle and then stabbed it deep, grasping his shoulder to gain leverage to drive into flesh and between ribs. He had to almost crawl into Spike’s lap to get the proper power behind it, but soon he was twisting the blade back and forth. Spike made distressing sounds, choking, coughing. A froth of bubbles joined the blood coming from the wound.

Giles stepped back, once again he wiped off the knife and then wiped his own brow.

Spike coughed and spat a blob of bloody phlegm at Giles. It hit the watcher in his trousers as he quickly stepped back.

Giles picked up a larger knife and held it to Spike’s groin. “Perhaps what is needed here is permanent damage.”

Spike sucked in his gut, trying to get away from the knife, and the alcohol and blood burned anew in the long cuts. “Bastard,” he said. “I’ll give you my word, all right?”

Giles dug the knife point into the soft bulge of Spike’s balls, ripping a small hole in the denim. “And what good is that, a vampire’s word?”

Despite the pain, and the hole in his chest, he met Giles eyes steadily. “Never broke my word. Can you say the same, watcher?”

A flutter across Giles’ features showed he hadn’t considered the possibility of an honorable vampire. Spike laughed humorously.

Giles shrugged and jammed the knife hard, deep into his groin. Spike howled. The pain was worse when he drew the knife out, the tissues pulling, trying to follow it.

Again, Giles wiped his knife off on the now quite gory knee of Spike’s jeans. “I want you to remember this, Spike. If you even consider double-crossing us, I will hunt you down. I will bring an end to you but before I do I will hurt you, and go on hurting you, until you beg for the stake.” He set the knife down on the small table with the others and stood a moment, regarding Spike, as though waiting for him to say something.

Breathing hurt, burned and tugged at the whole right half of his chest, but Spike managed to pull in enough air to say, “Still an amateur.”

“Perhaps. But I trust you see I mean business.” He picked up another object from the table, a light chain, which he passed between his hands, weighing it. “The incantation on your bounds will make it impossible for you to escape, and the room is warded against sound, so no one will hear you if you scream.” He stepped forward and looped the chain around Spike’s neck.

A dozen small silver crosses jingled pleasantly, until they landed, at first with the quiet sound of jewelry hitting skin, but very soon hissing with burning flesh.

Giles smirked, adjusting the lay of the collar so the crosses were evenly distributed. “You have the night to consider things. Good night, Spike.”

And he turned and walked out of the room, closing a heavy metal door behind him. Spike howled and cursed and thrashed, hoping to dislodge the necklace, but only succeeded in spreading out the damage.

At last he just held still, panting as well as he could with the wheezing pain in his lung, hoping the skin under the crosses would burn enough that it couldn’t feel anymore.

END


End file.
